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The ABC of personal branding

Published by Paolo on 27/06/2025

Days ago, on a private conversation, a LinkedIn friend of mine told me “you are the best game design influencer that I know”. I am thankful for that comment, also if I don’t consider myself an influencer. I prefer to use the term communicator.

I hold another interesting discussion on “personal branding” which together with that happening made me think… I don’t really believe in “personal branding”, and being an influencer, and stuff like that.

Branding is something manufactured, the risk with thinking in myself as a brand is to start perceive myself as a commodity, somehow.

I believe in ABC: acknowledgement, body of work, and character. I think I work a lot on that, more than branding.

And I worked it CBA:

1. Character building: this is something personal, everyone tackles this in a different ways and I cannot teach anyone how to do that. I can share one of my character built feature: I deliver, no matter what. I don’t say “I cannot do that in such a small time”. Of course, according to the time I can deliver something more or less detailed. But that’s on you that gave me that time, everything is pretty transparent. I wasn’t like that before had to build that. And that is just one thing among multiples.

2. Body of work: you will become better at the things you practice more often, simple as that. Many years ago, I decided to stop focusing on look for a job in games and started just practicing game design, every single day. Also small things, like listening to a podcast and taking notes, sketching my ways of working. Consistently I developed my body of work. Today I see something from my past and it’s so bad that I notice my progress and I am happy. Plus, thanks to these scrappy spreadsheets, today I have my personal way that brings me income.

3. Acknowledgement: this comes only as a consequence of C and B, you need to find your people. Campfires are better than social networks. A campfire is a group of few people, it can be a reddit group or a slack channel. Interact with like minded people, find people to admire and listen listen listen. And send DMs to listen more. On the other end, you need to work on something. And on that point especially nowadays I cannot teach anything, it’s so hard. But I can say that if you have a job and tomorrow lose it, consider the juggler metaphor, from Seth Godin.

Juggler metaphor: manies believe that the secret of a juggler is the catch. Truth is, the secret is the throw!

Consider each job you had and lost not like you failed a catch. You were learning how to throw better, like a juggler! By flipping your point of view on this (very hard, I still hold consequences of that process), you will get more authority over time.

What I learned in the Playable Stories Workshop

Published by Paolo on 03/03/2025

Yesterday, I participated in a workshop on how to write for playable stories. It was a workshop oriented to professional game writers, and I am not. Still, I found it very useful in improving my skills in narrative design.

It was divided into 3 sessions, with pauses in the middle. Session one was about how games change stories. Session two was about how to make stories playable. The last one was about how to use the storytelling toolbox. The tools all writers have and also the tools that belong only to game writers.

The workshop was packed with practical insight and exercises to train for the next days. In Fall 2022, a company I worked for paid for my fee at the narrative department workshop. This gave me access to a series of interesting workshops at a special price. I am thankful for that.

On technical skills

Published by Paolo on 25/02/2025

Let’s talk about technical skills. I read a question around often and sometimes some students ask me: what skills should I have?

The question comes most of the time from our innate desire to fit (gregariousness, submission). There is a job market and we want to get in. This is fair.

As far as I’m concerned, the answer is like learning a new language. If there is no valid reason behind it, we will make a lot of effort to learn it. I learned English to better understand songs and video game stories. I learned Spanish to be able to live where I live. I learned Portuguese because of the culture and history behind Capoeira. I did learn because I felt would improve me as a person.

Likewise, the technical skills I decided to cultivate for game design come from there. Spreadsheets because I have always liked math and put things in order. The most common engines, especially for level design, because it puts me in a state of flow like when I play a video game. Game writing because, as you can see, I love writing. UX/UI because I don’t know how to draw, but I still like to arrange things visually as a form to clarify my ideas.

The question for me is not “which skills should I learn?”, but “which are the technical skills that can help me find my voice and let it come out?”

The main challenge of a professional game designer

Published by Paolo on 24/02/2025

It’s one thing to design a game (or a feature of a game) and another to sell it. This is perhaps the hardest lesson to learn during the career of a game designer.

It’s not just about thinking about systems, mechanics, development context. It’s also about convincing someone to go ahead.

  • If you have the funds, this someone can be a potential player. You have to convince them to play.
  • If you don’t have the funds, but you have a great idea, this someone can be a publisher or an investor.
  • If you work for someone, you have to convince them!

The key point is always in the expectations that one has about something.

  • “I will buy this game for 30 euros because I think I will have a fun time”
  • “I have to invest in this project because I see great possibilities of return”
  • “I approve this design because I think it is the right one for our game”

The biggest challenge is that creatives think on a different level than others.

I’ll give a concrete example with my game Pawtners Case. Lately I’ve been proposing it to try to finance it. It is perceived as a game that is too cheap, and so with little potential. It doesn’t matter that I propose something workable and scalable. Publishers prefer to focus more on something unachievable rather than go step-by-step.

A good use case for Claude.ai

Published by Paolo on 13/02/2025

I just paid for the premium subscription to Claude AI. Writing certain design documents took me 3-4 days. With Claude, 1-2.

Like every AI, it freaks out a lot. But this help me get started on tasks. I tell it to write me certain spec, it writes me something full of errors and that helps me think. It’s like teaching to a dumb student.

Then, when I have my document with wireframes, I pass it to it and first I tell it to act as a programmer. Again, it hallucinates but it helps me understand the “edge cases” the empty cases that I hadn’t thought of.

Finally, after a second iteration on the document, I send it again and ask to act as a quality assurance professional, to generate a test plan for me. This helps me think carefully about closing all the loose ends.

This is valuable. Indeed.

Playtest what’s wrong to find solutions

Published by Paolo on 11/02/2025

A good way to learn more about your game is to keep something that you see as problematic and playtest it. You will discover the obvious, that you need to fix it. But you will also understand much more things behind that.

It happened to me last week, I had the opportunity of running a playtest for my game. And for it I decided to create a specific control system. The developers said “we don’t feel it right”, and me neither.

At the playtest, everyone told me that the system was unconfortable. But I had to see their struggle to decide to take action in first place. In fact, I could notice how they handled the things and that helped me find the solution.

LLMs to spot design flaws

Published by Paolo on 04/02/2025

I just discovered another interesting use case for current LLM tools. I use Claude.ai at the moment it’s the best in class. I use the free version.

When you design on a document, let’s say a GDD or a one pager for a feature, you should cover the most possible edge cases. In this way, your coders will have everything pretty much clear by reading the document.

If you submit a document to Claude, then you can ask it to simulate the coding in Unity or Unreal Engine for that GDD. It will spit out pseudo code and reasonings. There will probably be lots of hallucinations and things unuseful. Still, there are good chances to discover something you didn’t considered.

Working in a team is self-discovery

Published by Paolo on 03/02/2025

Today I discovered something more about myself, thanks to the creative director of the project I am working on with a company.

I tend to not insist too much on my vision. I explain it, defend it, and usually that’s it. When I see too much resistance from the other side, if I have no real power over the decision, I desist and try to meet the boss’ vision.

This is good, but it can lead to a passive-aggressive way of communicating. “I will do like you say, but I do not agree”. At first it may seem like there’s nothing wrong with that, butthe issue is that:

  • it looks like a “ok, whatever” and can damage the relationship
  • it is vague, proposes no real solution, and can damage the project
  • It is not informative enough for the team to make choices on that

Today I have learn something more about myself. Something I want to fix. And that’s why I prefer to work within a team.

Job applications do not work

Published by Paolo on 31/01/2025

When I was 20 in Naples, it happened that I was with friends and we met unknown people. And we discover some party at a student’s house to sneak in. Sometimes it went well, others we would find ourselves with very different people. Among ourselves, sitting in a corner, sipping the same beer we had bought to join the party.

Today I don’t sneak in anywhere anymore. I like parties, but I prefer the comfort of being with people I already know. Sometimes I go to strangers’ houses, but in general I like to know a sufficient number of people.

The same goes for job hunting. I prefer having groups of friends in the industry and moving with them. I have a job right now because during the first months of my daughter’s life I played Fortnite at night and wanted to learn how to make levels. That’s how I met the person who then put me in the loop. This is the healthiest way to learn about realities and find opportunities.

What to do when you don’t know what to do?

Published by Paolo on 17/01/2025

Often it happens that your team is developing what you have defined in your design documentation. It happens that you don’t know specifically what to do next.

I use these moments to play competitor games and engage with their audience. I join Discord servers, lurk subreddits, and so on. I try to keep myself in the shoes of a Player of my references.

The second thing I do is to play the last build or the last code version intensively. As a game designer you need to be aware of what game is coming out.

I also keep ordered single big documents containing everything that has been already defined and implemented in the game. It is very useful to keep track of the vision and its progress.